In 2016, digital marketing has completely come of age, with SEO leading the way for high-traffic websites. This is because for the last couple of years, the digital market has undergone a tremendous evolution. Over the last decade, SEO has become one of the most important marketing tools for all sorts of businesses.

Although there has been such positive growth in the digital world, the dust finally seems to have settled and businesses all over are realizing some important lessons – successful marketing still highly relies on traditional marketing methods like branding. There is no doubt that building a brand is one of the most important elements to SEO and generating traffic to a website. There are many reasons for this.

Brand Awareness is Still the Biggest Promoter of Products

While brand awareness can be improved through digital means like SEO and digital strategy, the basic tenets like having a loyal consumer base who identify with the product lies in the traditional technique of creating a strong brand. A strong brand is one which accurately aligns all its various aspects into a single idea that the customers can identify with.

By building and leveraging a strong brand, businesses ensure that every time a target customer is looking for the product, they go directly to it without looking for its alternatives. This means that customers do not just stumble upon the product, they actually look for it. Companies can benefit from a strong brand by having complementary marketing methods like mainstream media and a proper branding strategy.

Branding Puts Technology Work

Consistency is the most important approach of getting actual people aware of your products. When it comes to technology however, there are special algorithms in SEO that work well with search engines. The design of these algorithms is in such a way that they rely heavily on traffic to match certain keywords with certain websites.

This means that, a good branding strategy that encompasses all these basics will give the brand priority when certain keywords are input into the search engine. Crafting an intelligent SEO strategy that takes into account these fundamentals will definitely work best for companies who have built strong brands.

Search Visibility Can Be a Powerful Brand Statement

Search engine algorithms give priority to websites that have greater authority. This authority is determined by links that confirm the reach and credibility of a certain website. Search engines often rank websites according their content and link veracity. While some companies may get involved in unscrupulous methods of generating fake links, it does not work in the long-run due to smart algorithms that filter fake links.

Better branding ensures that certain websites have higher online authority than others, thus increasing their SEO potential. Companies can leverage on this by improving their brands through good promotion techniques both online and offline. Offline classification, definition and differentiation of brands is one of the best ways to attract unique hits online from both individuals and other websites online.

Many companies and websites have totally missed the opportunity that digital marketing has availed due to poor marketing strategies. While SEO is a very strong marketing tool, in the end it highly depends on the authenticity and strength of the brand offline.

In addition to leveraging Google Ads to increase visibility, smart businesses know that SEO and achieving high search rankings are crucial to getting exposure and being seen by new customers. SEO helps companies increase their visibility in search engines' organic listing, helping to drive qualified traffic to their websites.

In light of vital SEO intelligence from Moz, over 150 of the best SEO companies, analysts, and consultants were asked in 2015 to rank the factors that were most important for websites to be more visible in search engines. There are many ways to increase your exposure, and these are only four of the most important in 2015 and in the coming year.

You can learn more about these factors by visiting the data at Moz, or read some of the most influential Google ranking factors below.

Domain-level Link Features

Domain-level link features (DLLF) were regarded as the most important SEO ranking factor in 2015. Put simply, DLLF refers to the link popularity of each page of your website. It is important to have several quality sites that link to each of the pages of your site as it indicates that your site is seen as an authority in your field. DLLF is an SEO element that is likely to continue to rank highly in 2016, so it is important to keep those links bringing in customers to increase your search engine presence.

Page-level Link Features

Much like DLLF, page-level link factors relies on links to an individual page on your site. PLLF are ranked almost as highly as DLLF, so it is important not only to get links to each of your pages, but to get high quality sites linking to the individual pages you wish to showcase.

Page-level Keyword & Content-based Features

These features are important for your page visibility because it tells search engines and customers what your page is about. The first step is to create quality content that people want to read. The next step is to ensure that your primary keywords are located in the heading, the page URL and the content. Creating topically-relevant SEO-friendly content that customers actually want to read with well-placed keywords is almost as important as link features.

Engagement and Traffic/Query Data

These days it is not enough just to have quality links to your site and good content, ideally you want to engage people in your site and get them to stay for longer and click on the other pages of your site. Google collects the data of how long people engage in a site.

If customers are clicking back as soon as they see the site, Google will understand that the site doesn’t contain the necessary information and automatically list it lower in the search results. As Google collects more site engagement data, this feature will become more important for sites that want to remain ranked highly. Creating engaging content and quality links will be increasingly important for SEO's to keep top of mind in 2016.

SEO Moving Forward in 2016

Each of these factors will be crucial in 2016 for SEO and website visibility on Google. It is important to work these factors into your SEO strategy to stay ahead of the pack in the coming year. As more websites and businesses are created every year, ranking your website on the prestigious page one becomes increasingly competitive.

Unfortunately the quality of your product is not a factor that Google concerns itself with, and it is important that customers can easily find your website, by having high quality links and creating engaging content to be successful in 2016.

For every business moving forward with SEO services, it is important to know the industry standards in terms of cost and expectations. One should make a very favorable decision and also look at the tips on how certain SEO agencies and service providers operate. This way you can make a more informed decision about the SEO services you choose to invest in, and when you can expect to see results.

Models of the SEO Payment

Most SEO agencies, consultants, and related service providers offer four main payment models:

Monthly Retailer

In this model, the customers pay a given amount of fee every month in exchange of a service. It is a common model of making payments as it offers the greatest ROI based on the SEO services being performed. The monthly arrangements for the customer, or deliverables, often include regular analytic reports, press releases, rank reports, and/or optimization checklists.

Project-based Pricing

Project-based SEO fees are similar to the services contract. The pricing usually varies depending on the project. Example a local cupcake shop can ask an SEO agency to help them with their online marketing. The customer decides if they are ready for the agency to make an establishment of their social media accounts. Therefore the cupcake business and the SEO agency decide on the scope and the cost of the project.

Contract SEO Services at Fixed Prices

Mostly all SEO agencies use contract SEO services. Before a customer is ready to engage a monthly retailer, they make a selection of the contract services which they want to be completed. The SEO services that are provided by the SEO agency on month-to-month bases or for a 6-to-12 month SEO program for a set price.

A good example of this is the SEO audit that determines the existing strengths and weaknesses in the online presence of the customers, competitive analysis that have the highest potential to give a positive return on ROI.

Hourly Consulting

This is a known model of SEO consulting which hourly fee is exchanged for the information. It's very simple and straightforward. SEO consulting services will often range from $50/hour to $300/hour depending on the location, type of SEO, and professional offering the services. For instance, ecommerce SEO consulting services are often more expensive than local SEO services because of the depth of the website and competition.

Things To Be Suspicious Of

Instant results – Some of the SEO tactics can have instant results through gaming of the system. Therefore you need to be warned since these can hurt you in the long run. They involve the SEO practices which are against the webmaster guidelines put out by the search engines.

Guarantees – SEO firms cannot provide guarantees because of the constant changing nature of the industry.

Costs that are lower than $750 per month – when it comes to SEO you are not shopping for the lowest price but you are seeking the best level of the service. Be warned of the unbelievable deals.

Spot on Google – if an agency promises you number one spot on the Google it something good. However it is something that a firm cannot promise to hand over to you.

Things to Keep Top of Mind

Not SEO services are created equal – Always find the finest SEO agency you can. Keep top of mind finding an SEO company that defines the scope of the services and take time to educate you.

SEO takes time – a monthly trainer is the best- Think of SEO as a long term investment. The most enduring results of the SEO come from a long term relationship.

SEO is important – The point of your website is just to increase or improve your business. The best thing to do is to pay what it takes to keep your site available by the people you are looking.

For most of the business, SEO is the best ROI marketing effort and the cost of SEO services is worth it. The benefits it offers are more than the value of other approaches of marketing that is broadcast advertising, direct mailing and the online ads etc.

There are times when your PPC advertising campaign might be suffering from a very low click through rate. It is also possible that you might be wasting a good amount of money on irrelevant or vague keywords. Whether my investing in a PPC training course or doing research yourself, it’s important to regain control over the PPC campaign by using negative keywords to stop showing advertisements to the wrong target audience.

While traditional keyword targeting allows you to display ads for relevant keyword searches (i.e. "mens shoes"), negative keywords need to be used to prevent ads from being triggered to the wrong audience for unwanted keyword variations (i.e. "mens shoe shine"). Using negative keywords is vital for PPC optimization and refining the ad targeting of your campaigns.

Tips to Use Negative Keywords

It is important to understand that your Bing and Google reps need to have lists of negative keywords for similar accounts. Therefore, you will have to check them for relevance. In addition to this, you will have to make sure they do not take crucial terms out of play in the PPC campaigns. This can be a good starting point.

Just like planning a traditional keyword list, the next step is to explore Google (AdWords) Keyword Planner. It allows you to check related terms. This way, you get a clear idea about certain terms you can take out of your campaign for PPC campaign optimization.

Last but not the least, it is recommended to use Google’s search query report to classify new negative keywords. In fact, it’s considered by any certified PPC consultant to be the most effective way to check what kind of real searches are triggering advertisements. Moreover, you can also take out the ones that don’t make any sense.

How to Make the Most of Negative Keywords?

It’s worth mentioning that Bing Ads is the standard platform for purchasing search terms across Bing and Yahoo search engines. Since negative keyword practices for Bing are different from AdWords, it’s important to consider a few things. A major difference between AdWords and Bing is that advertisers can designate only exact match negative keywords and phrases for Yahoo and Bing searches.

In case you import Google advertisement campaigns to Bing, like most advertisers, you need to understand that the broad match negative keywords will automatically get converted to phrase match negative keywords by Bing. This is important if you're providing ecommerce PPC management services for large online store sites.

It’s important to understand that Bing doesn’t support basic keyword-level negatives. However, it’s possible to set up ad group and campaign level negatives, just like AdWords. In order to make everything easier, you should use Bing’s instructional guide about setting up negative keywords. For your convenience, Bing also provides shared negatives’ list.

Verdict

Considering to place your money on the most popular keywords isn’t the end of the battle. You also need to focus on the most sophisticated set of negatives. Building negative keyword lists should be refined and continuously expanding on the basis of real data.

In most cases, Google does a great job of browsing through millions of advertisements to serve the most relevant one to a searcher. However, there’s still scope for mistakes. The most effective way to make sure this doesn’t happen to your PPC campaign is to spend some money on negative keywords.

Social media is now playing a major role in the marketing strategy of most local and global businesses. New ideas romp the social media marketing industry each and every day and; therefore, each and every business ought to consider keeping updated with such new trends and ideas to win potential consumers.

One secret that social media marketers can use to drive their marketing strategies is the use of social media influencers. Social media influencers should not be confused with social media audience.

These are the people who inspire other social media users to act. Social media influencers have weight to sway other users act in a certain way in compelling other users buy products from a company. They use their experience, trust, credibility and experience to drive other users.

The Pivotal Role of Social Influencers

Below we discuss how social media influencers can play an important role in helping a brand or business reach new and seemingly far-fetched clients, as well as some actional strategies to find and connect with influencers.

Social media influencers can be any of the following people:Bloggers - these are the powerful people who are capable of convincing other people to interact and create quality content. They often come with posts that fly via the social media sites to reach a wider area as well as global audience. Blogging is a common thing that has taken over the social media and the internet at large.

Facebook Users - these are the individuals that are capable of sharing Facebook themes that they find interesting and arouse feelings of elated bliss in other Facebook users. As a result, they cause comments, likes and intense attention from other Facebook users. Such Facebookers are essential to any marketer seeking to have maximum exposure for their products.

Twitter Users - these are the people who generate content, share, respond, replies and retweet content over the Twitter social platform. By doing so, they influence others Twitter users, attract them to act.

Google Plus Users - they update and share all the trending topics and updates of one’s products. They aid elevate and increase the chances of success to a business.

Tips on How to Pinpoint Social Media Influencers

Understanding how to find social media influencers is the best step every marketer can take. There are various ways in which a marketer can pinpoint their influencers through sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.

Finding Influencers on Facebook

The number of fans does matter a lot when it comes to Facebook. The quality and level of communication in Facebook greatly influences the success of any marketing strategy. To determine one’s influencer’s on Facebook, there are various factors to consider, such as:

Frequency of posting. The more frequent a person posts, the higher their chances of getting heard. They thus increase the chances of exposing your products and services to potential clients.

The people that get the highest number of likes, shares and comments.

The extent of engagement such people get from their fans. This aids you determine whether they are capable of attracting more people.

Finding Influencers on Twitter

There are some factors that one can assess when trying to find influencers on Twitter.

The magnitude of conversation; here, one can consider factors such as opinions, advice and much more. How other people talk with a person can show you the extent of trust people have in such individuals.

The number of tweets and retweets; the number of tweets of an individual and the retweets they get can clearly depict one’s power to influence.

Finding Influencers on Google+

Although Google+ is not that popular, it can work greatly in influencing search engine and potential clients. There are factors that can depict that one is an influencer. These include:

Their profile views; this will enable a marketer understand how visible one updates on Google+. The higher the number of viewers the higher their chances of spreading one’s product awareness.

The number of comments received; higher number of comments show that one is capable of engaging other users in the content posted.

Update viewers. one can be a great influencer if they have the ability to attract high numbers of viewers and audience through the content that is updated.

Social media provides a convenient platform where clients and marketers interact to establish lifelong relationships. The ability of a marketer to personify and establish solid relationships with social media users can work the magic out in increasing the exposure of their products and services.

SEO is very important when it comes to getting your ecommerce website found. It's so important, in fact, that you want to make sure you aren't putting much thought into it.

You read that right. When you're doing SEO, the first rule to remember is that the rules that worked last year likely won't work the same as they did today. This primarily because Google is always making tweaks to its algorithms, and it often targets effective SEO practices (that manipulate search results in SEO's favor) to make them either less effective, or potential penalty prone.

Some rules may always be valid. For instance, when you make a comment on somebody else's blog that actually sounds like you're adding something to the discussion, add a link to your own website if you can do it without looking like you're spamming.

Another example is updating your ecommerce site's content regularly with new ideas and fresh pages. This can help your SEO efforts, but should be apart of your overall online marketing strategy.

Where to Focus & What to Push Aside

In essence, don't fall for “black hat” tactics (like artificially going for the keywords whenever possible) that might work, but take some sketchy practice to achieve. Instead, push aside former SEO practices and embrace more holistic online marketing strategies that bring value to your website, business, and target market.

To help you understand what aspects of SEO to avoid, below are five common strategies that new ecommerce startups in particluar should push aside.

Push aside link building. There is software that can automatically build the links for you, but you want to avoid even that much because Google can tell if you're not doing it yourself. Make link building something you do by hand when you do it at all so that Google can see what you're not blindly going for as many links as you can get. Instead, focus on making your content so good that it won't really matter if Google suddenly decides to say, “Nevermind,” when it comes to counting backlinks.

Push aside the need/quest for #1 rankings. Basically, you shouldn't obsess about it. Everybody's going for the top spot, but you'll be doing good if you can get on the front page. Instead, design your content and your marketing strategy around what you would have done if Google never existed. The algorithms are getting better at reading your content like a human would, so if a visitor who is seeing your site for the first time can tell right away what it's about, so can Google.

Don't let yourself get talked into a strategy that doesn't feel right. Sometimes people will pretend to be SEO marketing experts and try to sell you services you don't need. Ignore them and that rulebook that was written a few years ago, before the Panda Update shakeup ever happened. Your business is about people, not Google, so you want to make sure you're not selling to a company that may not know or care that you exist.

Try localized SEO if you run a local business. You'll usually have better luck if you optimize for the people who search for women's clothing boutiques in Toronto or bookshops in Cleveland. You still want to make your website looks like you proofread, but in most cases, you'll get a better return on investment by applying local SEO strategies along with your online marketing efforts.

Don't freak out if you don't see results right away. Think of this as being like a good diet and exercise regiment for your website. You feed it quality content with wise use of keywords and bulk it up with frequent updates. It can take a couple of months to start noticing an increase in search engine traffic if you're using good tactics.

So good SEO is still doable, but you want to make sure you're basically not being obsessive about it and using outdated tactics. Instead, focus on greater ways to build and manage a web presence as a whole from a branding perspective, and worry less about keyword rankings and search engine performance.

For the past few years, Google has been tight-tipped about the importance and the value of social signals in determining quality content. In the year 2014, they said that social signals are not an active component of their ranking algorithm. But this is the complete opposite of what they said in the year 2010.

Social signals are an important part of all kinds of digital marketing efforts. They have power to drive traffic naturally and through paid channels. But what are the effects of social signals on your SEO efforts? Below are some of the primary means in which social signals contribute to SEO.

Increased Traffic

The traffic originating from social signals is what Google likes seeing and you can easily turn the no-follow links in your social media profile into a real asset. Google will easily know that people are talking about your site through social media and there is a live person managing the social channels to maintain the engagement at higher levels.

After you have turned the social signals into social shares, real value will come to play. If your content is good, people will share it through their social networks and others will link to the content.

Link Acquisition

Links from your social channels have to go through a long way before carrying the weight of citation or editorial link. And link building should be a large part of serious SEO strategies. Natural links are important even though they are hard to earn and leverage.

But you should know that your social links have underlying authority and mostly if they originate from the trusted social networks. You can leverage them to increase the traffic in your website and to improve online visibility.

To benefit from the links, you have to be prepared. Ensure that you have optimized your pages to track and catch any traffic originating from your social networks. Check your social bios and profiles and ascertain that you have optimized them for optimal results with back links to your primary website.

Domain Authority Growth

Social signals can increase the overall authority of a website. Generally, the social signals have impact on the authority of a site’s domain which makes sense. While you will be directing more traffic to your website which you get from the trusted networks, it will increase the value and authority of your website. Google recognize social signals as brand signals which they like.

Tapping Into Social Chatter

The heightened importance of social signals in SEO marketing should prompt you to stepping up your web presence in the social media. Major social players continue making strides into SERPs. Social networks have millions of regular users and this is a resource that you should tap.

You should focus in making share-worthy content whether it’s an article, info graphic, survey or video and use it in attracting more attention in your social outlets. By making socially targeted and share-worthy content, you will be able to drive more traffic into your website and you will pass on the much needed social authority.

In addition, you should remain focused with social contacts. By commenting on industry forums and socials media posts, you will be able to drive even more traffic into your website. Social signals have a vital role in the launch and maintenance of successful SEO strategies and you should work to make the best out of your social links.

The internet is a fairly crowded place, so much so that standing out from the masses can present a number of difficulties. Admittedly, there are numerous tools and strategies that one could deploy to make their ecommerce SEO efforts so much more effective.

Yet, more often than not, with the majority of ecommerce sites on the internet utilizing the exact same tools and strategies to achieve results, one must rely upon their creativity and imagination to make an impact online.

Why Link Building is Vital for Ecommerce SEO Success

Sure, you have every reason to keep building links the old fashioned way. You just have to accept the fact that you are not likely to get anywhere, no matter how hard you try. After all, the competition is so stiff online that most ecommerce firms more often than not depend upon luck to get that big break that catapults them to the top of the pyramid. Of course, the fact that those old and trusted ways of link building have, over time, proven ineffective shouldn’t cause despair. While you could hire an ecommerce SEO company, the courage to deploy more creative strategies to achieve results in your ecommerce SEO efforts, some of those creative means of link building including the following:

Interviews

Try reaching out to and interviewing experts and influencers within the SEO and social media arena. The idea is to utilize the fame and clout of the individual in question to spread the fame of your own online resource, possibly even convincing the interviewee to share the interview on their website or social media platforms, in the process allowing you to tap into the considerable streams of traffic they probably enjoy.

Guest blogging

The purpose of guest blogging lies in enabling you to reach out to the audiences of more successful bloggers with the aim of eventually linking back to your own website. Few other ecommerce SEO techniques are as effective when it comes to increasing one’s visibility on the internet as guest blogging. The basic idea is to earn links back to your website.

Quizz

Crafting a quiz might not sound like a particularly effective use of your time; however, quizzes are a very effective tools for creating quality links to your website. They force people to engage and take an interest, eventually trickling back to the source of the quiz, if only to satiate their curiosity. Of course, you have to remember to relate the quiz to your site.

Events

If you want to rapidly build links for ecommerce SEO, consider sponsoring an event. Try to remember the fact that most conference websites list every single party sponsoring their event. The idea is to take advantage of the conference in question by drawing attention towards your online resource,

Giveaways

People love free things. Consider investing in promotions that provide users the opportunity to win free stuff. Creativity is important in this arena. From shirts to pens, this is an effective way of attracting and maintaining the interest of the online community.

When it comes to ecommerce SEO tactics, quality matters; which is why one of the easiest ways of building quality links is to create content that is compelling enough to attract interest, this along with posting quality reviews of products on other ecommerce sites with the aim of earning some decent links back. Inject effort into your ecommerce SEO activities and your hard work will manifest in the quality of your work.

If you own an ecommerce business, then it is often valuable to invest in ecommerce SEO solutions, particularly starting with an SEO site audit. An ecommerce site audit can reveal actionable insights and strategies on how to improve the SEO of your ecommerce site.

There are many ecommerce SEO companies that provide some great SEO auditing solutions for various types of online stores. While you could use SEO auditing software, the information of a professional and manually tailored SEO audit for your ecommerce site will help you to yield a greater return from your investment.

An ecommerce SEO audit can help reveal the opportunities and weakness of your online retail business and specific areas in which your team should concentrate on. Below are three trusted SEO auditing solutions designed specifically for ecommerce sites.

Click Centric SEO

Click Centric SEO is a full service ecommerce SEO company that can create ecommerce SEO campaigns especially customized and designed for your ecommerce business. Click Centric SEO is one of the best ecommerce SEO auditing solutions that you can use for your ecommerce website.

You can inquire about a free ecommerce SEO site audit on the company's website, which are manually generated from professional SEO experts. The ecommerce SEO auditing process reviews the content of the website, keyword usage, backlink profile, and also authority metrics of the site. Many more things are done. It is a highly beneficial solution which you should use for your ecommerce website. Visit www.clickcentricseo.com to learn more.

GU (Gray Umbrella) Marketing

Gray Umbrella) Marketing is another auditing solution which will help you to get details about the ecommerce website. You can evaluate i.e. rewrite content, optimize, create new content etc with the help of this. Even you can implement the industry research as well as share and create content.

You will be able to do thorough analysis with the help of this solution. Starting from ranking the website, getting traffic, analyse the overall search engine optimization campaign to building domain authority, all are possible with the help of this SEO auditing solution. Check out GU marketing to get more information on what they offer.

Volusion

Volusion is a great ecommerce SEO service that provides some of the best features to get the full audit of the website in a short period of time. The services include on-page and off-page search engine optimization. This solution comes with a 14 days trial version.

You can get more information from their official website. It has 3 packages and you can choose anyone based on the needs and preferences. You can choose either Starter SEO package, advanced SEO package or the custom SEO package. All these options are great and you can choose depending on the size of your ecommerce website. Visit www.volusion.com for more information.

Conclusion

So, you can try any one of the above SEO auditing solutions for your ecommerce website. With the help of these solutions you can increase the visibility of your website as well as this will help in increase of the traffic and sell. Thus for better business and getting better ROI this is something very important.

This will help you to know and understand that the investment you are doing on your website is going to be fruitful. You will be able to get more prospective clients and customers for the website. thus it will help you in expanding the business more and more.

Social media sites can help you improve the SEO potential of your brand. But for this, first of all, you need to improve the set-up, content, and structure of your social media profiles.

Optimizing social media profiles for SEO is done in many ways. However, one of the most important is to ensure that you have a link on each of your profiles directing to your ecommerce site (which should be common sense for those familiar with basic ecommerce SEO.)

Below are a few other methods to optimize your social media presence for SEO.

First, Establishing Proper Linking to Your Social Profiles

Use the following tips for to improve the linking structure of your social media profiles (which will help direct new followers and SEO opportunities to these properties):

Pinterest

On Pinterest, you can upload a branded profile picture. The picture will be small, so make sure you upload an image that can be easily seen at this size.

Next, create a lot of relevant boards and put a lot of content on the profile.

Don’t forget to add quality descriptions to the pins.

LinkedIn

On your LinkedIn profile, you can upload a banner picture and a company logo.

Create quality content and put it in the information section on your LinkedIn profile’s Home tab. Also, you can take benefit from the “Showcase Pages”.

Instagram

Instagram allows you to post both images and videos. So, use quality images and videos on the profile to attract as many visitors as possible.

The images and videos should have descriptions. Don’t forget to use hashtags, as they are of great help.

So, these were some easy to follow tips to help you improve the SEO potential of your social media profiles. With a little effort on a daily basis, you can achieve the desired success and enhance your overall social media marketing efforts, in addition to your ecommerce SEO strategy.